What happens next comes in flashes.
The seat straps are digging into my shoulders, biting down through my jacket. They’re digging in because I’m tilted forwards, all the way, on the edge of my seat. My left thigh hurts, but it’s a distant pain, and it doesn’t seem important right now.
The bottom of the Lyssa is gone. The space where it should be is filled with rocks and dirt, jagged and uneven, the shadows falling in strange shapes. The rocks are speckled with ice, painted in a dozen drab shades of white and grey and brown. Here and there is a flash of colour: dark purple, like a plant clinging to the surface.
When I open my eyes again, there’s movement. Hands. Feet. Someone falls, their body plummeting past me.
I don’t see them hit the ground. My eyes are already closed. All I hear is the hard thud, and the piercing scream that follows it, trailing off as I sink into darkness.
I come back when something grips my shoulder. A hand. Syria’s hand. His face is taut with concentration. He’s hanging off the side of the Lyssa–the pod has been torn to pieces, the metal shredded and pierced. Torn wires spit showers of sparks.
“Come on, Hale,” Syria says. His voice sounds like it’s coming from another dimension. “You’re the last one. Don’t make me wait here any longer than I have to.”
I close my eyes again.
Just before I go away, I feel Syria fumbling at my chest. His fingers are caught on something.
The buckle, I think. It’s connected to the straps, and the straps are—
My eyes fly open just as Syria pops the catch.
I drop, tumbling head first out of the seat. Syria grabs me around the wrist, holding tight. I can see the muscles in his arm straining, the drops of sweat pouring off his brow. I swing in place, clutching at him with my free hand, holding on with everything I’ve got.
The Lyssa is tilted at a sharp angle. What I thought was the floor was actually the wall opposite my seat, and there’s a fifteen-foot drop from where we are to the ground below. The dark purple things on the rocks are the shredded fragments of our parachute.
There’s a body on the ground. A woman, writhing in agony, clutching her leg, her blue jacket spread out around her like angel’s wings. She’s half lying in a pool of water. It stains the rocks, creeping up their sides.
“Just drop me,” I say to Syria.
“What?”
I don’t wait for him to get the idea. I shake loose of his arm and drop, tucking my legs.
For an instant, I get a clear view past the edge of the Lyssa. More rocks, some the size of the pod itself, resting in a sea of dirt. The ground is steeply sloped. A giant gash has been ripped out of it, the Lyssa tearing up the hillside. We must have come in at an angle, crashing across it. I catch a glimpse of grey sky, the clouds low and dark.
I hit the ground. Hard.
My muscles aren’t primed for it. It’s uneven, nothing like the hard, flat surfaces on Outer Earth. I land at the edge of the pool of water, try to roll, channelling my vertical energy at an angle, twisting so the impact travels across my spine, but my feet sink into the dirt. It absorbs the energy, trapping it, and the precise roll I was planning turns into a clumsy tumble.
I somersault, landing face first, a dagger of rock jabbing into my cheek. My thigh is screaming at me, as if someone stuck a hot knife in there and is slowly twisting it back and forth.
I ignore it, forcing myself to get up, shouting for Syria before I’m on my feet. He’s halfway down, clambering past the bottom edge of the Lyssa. The pod itself is almost torn in two, resting up against a boulder. There’s a smell in the air I can’t place, thick and pungent.
“Come on!” I shout at Syria. My words form puffs of white as I speak, and I suddenly realise how cold it is. The dry air scythes deep into my lungs. I’m aware of my fingers straying to my thigh, aware of them brushing something hard that sends little sparks of pain shooting through me. I look down, but my vision is blurry, unfocused. I can’t see anything.
Whatever it is, it isn’t slowing me down. It can wait.
The woman in the blue jacket is still on the ground. She’s passed out, and two more Earthers are dragging her to safety. Their faces are smeared with dirt and blood.
I run in, intending to help, then stumble to a halt.
The ground on the side where the woman lies is churned up, with dozens of depressions formed by everybody dropping down. Depressions filled with liquid that I thought was water.
It isn’t water.
It’s fuel.
Highly volatile, flammable fuel. So unstable that it’s not even supposed to be exposed to air.
There’s a steady stream of it trickling down the large boulder. That’s what the horrible smell is. And, above us, shredded wires are raining sparks.
“Get out of here!” I scream at the two Earthers dragging the unconscious woman. All I can think about are her clothes, soaked in fuel. There are two more Earthers beyond them, sprinting across the slope.
Syria is hanging, getting ready to drop. A thin stream of sparks rains down around him, and for the first time I see that he’s wounded, blood running from a huge gash in his shoulder.
He lands awkwardly, stumbling. I sprint towards him, pulling him away from the crashed pod, my feet catching on the uneven ground. I can’t seem to focus on any one object–the world is a mass of grey and brown, the freezing air slicing into my lungs. I almost fall, sliding down the slope a few feet, and have to use my hands to steady myself.
There’s no telling how long we have, or how big the explosion is going to be. I don’t even know if there’ll be an explosion, but I’ve seen fuel before and I don’t want to be around if it goes up.
“What about the others?” Syria shouts, looking over his shoulder.
“We don’t–watch out!”
I grab Syria’s shoulder, stopping him cold. What I thought was a pile of rocks concealed a short drop, the mucky ground sloping away at a steep angle. There are more rocks piled at the bottom of the slope, some as large as I am.
I hoist myself over, dropping down, telling myself to be careful. There’s a crack behind us, a big one, like the boulder holding up the Lyssa is giving way.
Whoomp.
For a split second the world is completely silent. There’s no air in my lungs–it’s been sucked away, pulled towards the Lyssa.
There’s no bang. No explosion. Just a sound that goes from a murmur to a roar in less than a second.
Syria screams. I’m looking up at him, and in that instant there’s a halo of white fire around his body. His jacket is burning. With a kind of horrified fascination, I see his hair start to smoulder.
Then the shock wave knocks him off the ledge. He collides with me and sends both of us tumbling down the slope.
Sky and dirt whirl around me. I roll end over end, screaming, fingers scrabbling at the ground, legs kicking out as I try to stabilise myself, my thigh sending up frantic signals of pain.
The tips of the fingers on my right hand snag something–a plant, growing out between the rocks. I don’t get a chance to make out the details–it snaps almost immediately, but it’s enough to slow me down a fraction. I’m on my back, my legs facing downhill. I spread them wide, my heels bouncing off the uneven ground. It’s crusted with ice, rock-hard, and I can’t break through.
Syria is just below me, still tumbling. For an instant, I see his back, a terrifying mess of red and black. Parts of his jacket are still smoking. Before I can do anything, he smashes into the rocks below, howling in pain.
I’m coming in way too fast. I lift my legs, using every muscle I have to get them off the slope. It looks like I’m doing a complicated stretch. I slam them back down, and this time my heels catch, smashing through the crust just enough to slow my descent.
I come to a stop, bumping up against Syria. Even that light tap is enough to jerk a horrified moan from him. He’s on his back, his face twisted in agony, breathing far too hard.
The fire has turned the top of the slope into hell. I don’t know how hot rocket fuel burns, but the rocks are blistered and blackened.
I get to my feet. I’m unsteady, off balance, but I pull Syria to his feet with a strength I didn’t know I had. He screams again, tries to push me away, but he’s too weak.
I don’t know if we can outrun the fire, but we have to try.
I wrap an arm around him. As I try to get a grip under his armpit, my hand brushes his shoulder. It’s baking hot, and the surface feels wrong: crumbly and soft, all at once.
No time to check. Moving as fast as I can, I pull Syria across the slope, away from the burning pod.